


Science Means Writing it Down

by TheXGrayXLady



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8507047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheXGrayXLady/pseuds/TheXGrayXLady
Summary: "Just you know, trying to make magical artifacts that I can use to assist in various hero duties, such as sweeping the floor, fighting Wuya, fighting her stone creatures, washing the dishes,  fighting monsters, harvesting the garlic, turning into a monkey, scrubbing the floor, watering the plants, fighting that weird bean guy, raking the leaves, …”“Did you say turning into a monkey?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I’ve been working on a couple of ficlets featuring Dashi making Shen Gong Wu and their various uses and origins. I was supposed to finish more of them before publishing anything, but you get what I have so far. It’s two AM and I’m still waiting for my WebMO stuff to finish running.

“There’s gotta be a better way to do this,” Dashi said, climbing back down the ladder, balancing his bucket on one arm.

“If there was a better way to harvest fruit, I think farmers would have found it by now,” Guan said, carrying his cherries to the larger bucket.

“Yeah and this is fun,” Chase added, hanging from the tree branches, grinning like a monkey, his hands and face almost as red as their robes and leaves tangled in his hair. “I’ve never seen so many cherries in one place before.”

Guan smiled back at Chase, then said, “As Master Chen says, ‘While one may catch fish with…’”

“Guan, I’ve heard it a thousand times,” Dashi said, waving off Guan’s regifted proverb. “And Master Chen is wrong. You catch way more fish using water powers.”

“And you flood half the meditation garden,” Chase added, flipping back up into the tree.

“That’s not the point,” Dashi said, jumping off the ladder. “This is _so_ tedious.  What I really want is a way to make the actual picking faster, but I’d settle for just getting from the tree to the bucket. There has to be a spell or something and I’m going to find a way to speed it up if my name isn’t…”

“Young monks,” Master Hua said, rushing into the orchard. “Come quickly!”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Guan said, walking over to the monk. 

“A mantis spirit has begun attacking one of the villages on the mountain,” he said. “Follow me, we must make haste!”

“Oh darn, just as the chores were getting interesting,” Dashi said, grinning and following Master Hua out of the orchard.

X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X

“So what are we going to _do_ with it,” Chase said, gesturing to the whispy green light floating between them. “We can’t just let it go and I’m getting bored.”

“Hi Getting Bored, I’m…” Dashi started, before Guan managed to silence him with a look. “Fine. Dojo any ideas?”

The dragon slithered out of Dashi’s shirt sleeve and said, “It’s got me stumped. I don’t think the monks planned this far ahead. Just send the kids off after the killer grasshopper…”

“Mantis,” Chase corrected.

“Same thing,” Dojo said.

“Guan? You listen to the monks. What did they say about this?”

“I don’t know, they just said that we would know what to do,” Guan said, deflecting the spirit and hitting it back towards Dashi.

“Can’t we just destroy it?” Chase said. “I mean, it’s trying to kill people and…”

“Got any ideas for how to do that?” Dashi asked.

 “Can’t you talk to it?” Chase said, gesturing to Dojo. “You’re a dragon, it’s a spirit…”

“Oh yeah, mystical dragon and lowly grasshopper…,” Dojo said, crossing his arms and glaring at Chase.  

“Mantis,” Chase said.

“…practically the same thing,” he huffed, turning around and crawling back into Dashi’s sleeve.

“Does anyone know anything about banishing…” Guan started.

Dashi stared at the spirit being batted back and forth between the monks, still not quite sure of what to make of it. This was the first time they’d dealt with a monster that didn’t just die. It just floated out of the corpse of the mantis and started zooming around. Now they had it corralled in a field between the three of them while they tried to figure out how to handle it.

“At least now it’s not jumping,” Guan said, hitting it back towards Dashi.

As he hit it to Chase, he tried to think of anything even remotely similar to this situation, but he couldn’t. Their best option was to bring it back to the monks and see if they knew what to do, but taking it back was all but impossible like this.

“It’s still better than that possessed lantern,” he added, shuddering at the thought of its light casting ways. Then he paused. “We could trap it.”

“With what?” Chase said, his hair flopping in his face as he flipped to kick the spirit.

“I don’t know. What do you have?” Dashi said.

“I have a couple of rolls from lunch,” Chase said, reaching into his pockets. “They’re kinda squished now, but they’re still good so you’re not using my snack to trap some grasshopper.”

“Mantis,” Guan said, grinning just a little. “And I don’t have anything either.”

“Then let’s see here…” Dashi said, fishing into his pocket. “Lint…lint…big piece of lint…and I’ve got a coin.” As loathe as he was to part with his money, this was getting boring. “Hit it towards me.”

“How do you know this’ll work?” Guan said.

“Do you have any better ideas?” he responded. When they both stared at him, nodded and said, “Thought so.”

“Fine,” Chase said, doing another very fancy flip to kick the spirit at Dashi.

As it headed towards him, he held the coin out in front of him. The green light grew brighter and brighter by the second and he could swear the spirit was getting bigger. For a second he considered jumping out of the way because this seemed an increasingly terrible idea. Then the spirit hit the coin and sank in.

He willed it to stay trapped. The coin grew hot and shook in his hand. Chase and Guan watched, mesmerized as it began to glow. He kept thinking of how much he wanted it to stay in the coin.

Then it slowly stopped shaking and glowing and began to cool. He stared, almost in disbelief at the coin in the palm of his hand. Then he clasped it tightly and grinned.

“Alright,” he said flipping the coin into the air.

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” Guan said.

“What do you mean you can’t beli…” Dashi said, catching the coin. As he caught it, it began to glow again. “Oh no.”

His legs bent, then he leapt through the air, higher than he ever had before, flipping the whole time. Then the ground rushed up at him and as soon as he touched down, he jumped again, almost flying across the field. It was almost exhilarating, except for the part he was jumping around with mantis magic, then plummeting towards the ground and unable to control it.  

“Drop the coin!” Chase shouted, the two of them running after him. He didn’t have to be told twice. Unfortunately, he probably should have as he was at the high point in his arc.

He flapped his arms in a desperate attempt to right himself, but that only served to dislodge Dojo. Fortunately for him, the dragon thought better of letting both of them crash into the dirt and managed to change size before they hit the ground.

“Are you okay?” Guan asked, running over to them.

“For someone who’s taken an unexpected tumbling in a sleeve, I’d say remarkably,” Dojo said, dusting dirt from his claws.

 “What? You’re not going to tell us, “No I’m Dashi.” Guan, there might be something wrong with him,” Chase said. “What did you do to it anyway?” He tentatively nudged the coin with his shoe.

 Ignoring Chase, he slid from the dragon’s back and stared at the coin in the dirt, mesmerized by its faint glow. He didn’t quite understand how, but he’d imbued the coin with some sort of magic and he wanted to know how it worked. So, naturally he picked it up again and turned it over in his hands a few times.

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Dojo said, “you’d better stop thinking it before you wind up splattered all over the…”

Dojo didn’t get to finish the thought before Dashi flipped the coin again.

“…Of course, that would imply he’s thinking,” Chase added as he started to jump.

This time, he was ready for it and it felt more coordinated. As he leapt and tumbled through the air, he could control where he landed, change directions midair, even pull off some of the trickier flips from training. When he finally thought he’d collected enough data on the coin and its effects, he placed the coin into his sleeve as he landed.

He grinned as he took the coin from his sleeve and brandished it at his friends. Their stunned, and slightly exasperated, expressions were almost entirely worth this whole adventure.

“Best. Idea. Ever.”

**_X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X_ **

“What are you doing in the restricted scrolls?” Dashi just about jumped out of his slippers, but settled for spinning around to see Chase sitting on top of one of the shelves.

“Why are you up there?” he sputtered, nearly dropping the scrolls.

“I asked you first,” Chase said, dropping to the floor.

“ _You_ scared me to death,” he said.

“How didn’t you notice me? Guan always knows when I’m there. Don’t you have those, “leopard impulses,” or something…”

“Tiger Instincts,” he corrected. “And I was focusing them on finding the right scrolls.”

“I believe you,” Chase said. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the kid was being sarcastic. “How’d you know they were the right scrolls?”

“Tiger Instincts,” he answered. “Why were you here?”

“You still didn’t tell me what you were doing with the scrolls,” Chase said, positing himself between Dashi and the end of the row of shelves. If he really wanted to, he could just push past him, but he decided that the drama that would result from potentially mussing up Chase’s hair wasn’t worth it.

“Fine. You caught me,” he said, gesturing at him with a scroll. “That thing with the coin was really cool and the elder monks were totally wrong to lock it up, so I’m gonna try to make another one.”

“Where are you gonna get another mantis spirit?” Chase asked, scratching behind his ear.

“I’m not,” Dashi replied.

“Then how are you gonna make another coin?”

“I’m not going to make another coin. Just you know, try to make another magical artifact that I can use to assist in various hero duties, such as sweeping the floor, fighting Wuya, fighting her stone creatures, washing the dishes,  fighting monsters, harvesting the garlic, turning into a monkey, scrubbing the floor, watering the plants, fighting that weird bean guy, raking the leaves, …”

“Did you say turning into a monkey?” Chase said, his eye brows raising to almost his hairline.

“I may or may not have insinuated that among other goals, I might have had the intention of transmogrifying myself and or others into monkeys,” Dashi replied, holding the monkey transfiguration spell a little closer.

“How?”

“I have some work to finish at the forge and I figured that while I was at it, I’d try out casting a few spells on an independent project and seeing where that takes me,” he replied.

“Can I help?” he asked, practically bouncing up and down with excitement. “I can take notes or help with the magic…”

“If you don’t tell the elder monks,” he said, poking at Chase with one of the scrolls.

“They won’t hear a thing,” Chase said.

“You drive a hard bargain kid, but you got yourself a deal,” he said, holding out his hand for Chase to shake, before snatching it back at the last minute. “If, and only _if_ , you don’t tell Guan.” He was almost as bad as the elder monks. He’d start asking if everything was safe and question whether or not it was anything less than the _best_ idea.

“Don’t tell Guan what?”

Both Chase and Dashi would later deny that they shrieked like banshees as they spun around to see Guan’s head peaking around the corner.

“ _Why?!_ Why do you guys do this?” Dashi asked, attempting to make his stumble into the wall look more like a casual lean.

“These are the restricted scrolls,” Chase said. “What are you doing here?”

“Meditating,” he said. Then upon seeing their disbelieving expressions, he added, “The monks gave me a key. They said I was respon…”

“Look, I don’t know what you heard, but I’ve got a plan that could revolutionize how we fight evil…”

“…and turn us into monkeys.”

“…Please, please, don’t let the elders know,” he said.

Guan stood at the end of the aisle for a moment, his head bowed slightly, his arms crossed, and his brows furrowed in thought. Then he said, “Only if you let me turn into a monkey.”

**_X~*~X~*~X~*~X~*~X_ **

Slowly, Dashi peeled himself out of the pile of shields, surveying the damage. Chase and Guan were fine, if a bit startled, the forge looked fine enough. Most of the damage was confined to the pair of wings on the bench. He glanced around again, his head swimming with the force of impact.

“Flying spells make a rainbow explosion. Chase, write that down” he said, falling back into the shields.


End file.
